#ShapetasticVoyage2013

Well shoot!  It winds down again; One more shaping-travel season comes to a slow, just as waves pick up at home - odd, its amost like I planned it!  Its been a few years now and it just keeps getting better - four summer seasons now of growing new communities of friends and learning faces of new waves through europe, australia, and indonesia - and it isn't exactly getting old yet.  

In May I premiered Almost Cut My Hair at home and within days hit the road for five weeks of shaping through europe; home for two weeks and off to New Jersey I went to shape 25 boards in four days.  Home again for two more weeks then it was off to Bali to shape at Deus for three weeks...Home for three weeks and then on the road in Australia and hawaii for 5 weeks respectively to keep on the foam grind.  I honestly don't know how many boards I've shaped this summer, my planer has a few more miles on it and my passport gained a bunch of stamps again.    

I couldn't have designed a more ridiculous life path for myself, and if you'd asked years ago what you thought i'd be doing, this would have been nowhere near the realm of possibility.  A big thanks needs to go out to everyone who helps me on my adventures, and those who so fiendishly support my habits by ordering all these boards.  

So with that, I'll leave y'all with a pile of photos from the season, as I haven't posted much about it!

Stringerless Volan v.Bowls at Kirra

Spotted in Biarritz

Pre and post-bedroom addition on the bus during my time at home

Went to Biarritz

Deus colab logo by The Land Boys

Took herbie to Jersey with me!

Wore a headband in Italy

Ari Browne blowing up Byron Bay on the rabbitsfoot by Ryan Heywood

Rabbitsfoot built on the Gold Coast

the Voyage was spotted en-route on our way out of Sydney...shakaaaaaaaa!

Found some waves in Australia

v.Bottom during one of my two stints in New Jersey

Rode a motorcycle in Bali with Katie and some Texans

Made a board for my babe

Moved into a new house with 'da boys

Ryan Burch at Uluwatu

Throughull built for Nick who joined on for the trip to Bali

From my room in Max's house in Viterbo, Italy.

If you want to check out a super up-to-date feed of WTF I'm up to, check out my Instagram @ryanlovelace, also you can search for the #shapetasticvoyage2013 tag for the entire adventure in photos if you're ultra curious. 

I'm absolutely amping to get home and settle in for the wave season in the bus.  New projects are always on the horizon, don't worry...

"He Died for Grater Opacity"

SIGN PAINTERS (OFFICIAL TRAILER) from samuel j macon on Vimeo.

Gotta find this one when its out.

Ryan Burch + Rabbitsfoot

Rabbitsfoot + Ryan Burch Section - Almost Cut My Hair from Ryan Lovelace on Vimeo.

Burch's session from Almost Cut My Hair...thought it may be of interest to some ;)

Almost Cut My Hair Now Online!

Download it or stream it, any way you want it. thats the way you need it!  She's available for streaming rental or the full-monty download...the time is now!

Get it via the radical link below:

Almost Cut My Hair on Reelhouse.org

#ShapetasticVoyage2013

#shapetasticvoyage2013 Ryan Lovelace at Kipusurfboards from Ryan Lovelace on Vimeo.

A little ditty from my time in Italy this past June!
In the two weeks in Viterbo, all the boards in the video and then about double that were shaped and glassed - hectic and heavy but beyond rewarding and a total joy to experience a new place and such a welcoming and enthusiastic crew!

Surfer Clipz

Surfermag.com - In The Shaping Bay with Ryan Lovelace

Gotta say I was hesitant to actually believe that they'd publish something like this, but damn I'm proud they did!  Dylan Gordon contacted me and said he had a short he wanted to make sure Surfer so I said sure...He came out and filmed/essentially lived with me at the shop for 4 days and what came out is a really great glimpse into what's happening on a daily basis.  Its hard to ever feel like real personality or honesty is coming through in any video, but when I saw this for the first time the other day it blew me away.  He nailed it and I couldn't be happier with how Dylan put this together, and I'm truly humbled and flattered by the whole of it...Couldn't be more pleased and I'm still in a little bit of shock :)

Premiere Night Video!

Almost Cut My Hair Premiere Night from Ryan Lovelace on Vimeo.

Premiere Night Like WHOA

Wow I'm glad that's off my chest...

Holding Almost Cut My Hair back from everyone I know for the past few months has been both fantastically fun and painfully hard; even the guys IN the movie hadn't seen it before last night, what a pleasure it was to share that with everyone at last!

The turnout was insane.  Every time the lobby seemed to mellow out, and new pilgrimage of stoked souls would turn the corner outside and march through the doors...humbling is a good word for the majority of what I'm feeling at the moment.  We packed the theater pretty darn good, with barely any open seats on the ground, my 'no hippies' rule was pretty obviously disregarded...The crowd definitely ran the gamut and completely filled out the Santa Barbara surf scene as well as I've ever seen it.  Kinda like every lineup and art show I've been in the for the last 9 years slammed into one room...well, then ad in the crew from New Jersey, the one from Seattle and all the cats from the San Diego area that showed up as well!

What I really wanted to say before the movie on stage, where I totally lost all of my words looking over the crowd, was what the title means to me.  If you're familiar with the song, you likely get it.  David Crosby wrote Almost Cut My Hair as somewhat of an anthem for himself and his attitude to life.  The song has guided the hardest decisions I've had to make in my life, both professionally and personally.  So when I was well into making my movie with no title, I started editing footage of Mr.Tevor Gordon...the most moving images I've seen of him to date, shot by one Michael Kew, and I threw over it the song I wanted to listen to...Almost Cut My hair.  Shivers went down my spine and I knew without a doubt that I had just nailed the most meaningful section of the movie to me, as well as the title...The opening lines alone spell it all out for me so clearly:

Almost Cut My Hair

Happened just other day

It's getting kinda long

I coulda said it was in my way

But I didn't, and I wonder why

....

Its so easy in life to bend what you think is the way to live your life, to cut yourself short and do what you think everyone wants you to do.  The entire story of the resin dot on my boards comes from that thought path, as well as the decision to hand shape everything while nobody else seems to have enough pride to do the work, as does my break from Point Concept, as does every time I'm faced with a heavy decision in life.. I just have to remember that its most definitely not going to be the easy road, but its the only way I want to do it, and its the only way that I'll be proud at the end of the day.

I can't thank everyone enough for the overwhelming show of excitement and support, the hoots, hollers, whistles, drunken slurrs and cat calls were everything I could have ever asked for in sharing that with all of you!  My measure of success was in all of your responses during the movie and I could never say, after last night, that I could ever have asked for anything more...You all are amazing, and leave me feeling like I can do just about anything my little heart desires, as long as I stay true to my own vision of surfing and all of my curiosities, hold my line, and never 'cut my hair'.

Premiere Date and Time - BINGO!

That should just about explain it!  

Art on this here poster by Ciro Bicudo.

And You Know That Notion | Just Crossed My Mind

Almost Cut My Hair - Official from Ryan Lovelace on Vimeo.

3 2 1

I've been working on a wee collage kind of thing at www.AlmostCutMyHairFilm.tumblr.com for the flick, lots of good stuff going on around it and we're just about wrapped up and ready to rock!  

Info coming soon on that front, but in the meantime I've got a pile of new boards heading to Down The Line surf shop in Cornwall, UK so any interested parties over that way should connect with them, 'cause I guarantee you 6 v.bowls won't last too long! 

!

In other international news, I'll be heading back to Europe for my annual shaping jaunt in June; the best contact if interested in a custom order is Wallako Surf Shop in France.  Orders for my Italian leg of the trip are booked to the max and I can't wait to get over there and get crackin'!

Down the Rabbitsfoot Hole

A guy I admire quite a lot for his pure enthusiasm and interest, Ryan Burch, giving the current iteration of the RabbitsFoot a test this past weekend.

Breather

Break time at the White Owl clubhouse last summer with mr.Gregg Tally.

Two Rolling Stone

A little adventure reel from a recent excursion...Surfing is mr.Trevor Gordon and one Johnny McCann,

musicsong is by Alt-J.

Trailer Time!

Almost Cut My Hair from Ryan Lovelace on Vimeo.

One of the previously mentioned projects, coming along quite well :)

You knew it would happen eventually.
Almost Cut My Hair is a zero budget surf film containing approximately 96% pure surfing coupled with a sound track worth listening to...the only catch being everyone involved is riding a surfboard that I built. If you can get past that last bit, I think you'll get a pretty killer show.

Over the past few years of meeting and working with countless creative individuals, I've made them boards and they've in turn shared their talents with me; I've piled it all together in what is my ultimate surf movie. ACMH is essentially the past few years of my work, set to some serious jams.

It makes me very happy and I hope it does you the same to you in the Spring of this year.

Containing the musical and/or surfical talents of:
Travers Adler, Trevor Gordon, Landon Smith, Will Adler, Morgan Maassen, Troy Mothershead, Ryan Lovelace, Johnny McCann, Michael Kew, Phil Browne, Joseph Horswell, Washmen and the Fisher, Simon Murdoch, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Connor Lyon and piles more...

Overboard | Overload

So I suppose I'm a tad bit late on my new year's post...let me try to explain.

I think I've found the edge.  Im in deep.  Years ago a close friend gave me a book called, The Way of the Superior Man.  Aside from the misleading title, its fantastic.  I'm not going to try to explain much about it here aside from a main point of the book is about a man finding his 'edge'...that being the point at which he has applied himself so fully that he feels tension about it, questions if it's too far and feels that "yeeeeeeah maybe I have".  The point that makes you rise to the occasion and conquer your task, emotional, physical, spiritual, whathaveyou.  Its a self help book, but not the wimpy kind.  The kind that makes you feel like you've got a bit of sense about yourself and your purpose as you read it...but I digress.  

I think I've found the edge.  As if building surfboards full-time start-to-finish wasn't enough or beyond that, having about 30 orders at a time consistently for the past 6+ months, I decided somewhere in there to buy a 1948 Chevy school bus to convert into my dream home on wheels.  Then with all this footage I've collected over the past few years, why not make a surf movie?  And HEY why stop there?!  Lets pick up an old motorcycle along the way and get back into the hobby that consumed my high-school years in Seattle...modifying and rebuilding bikes.  And lets do it ALL AT THE SAME TIME! 

Yeah great idea, Ryan...

I suppose I tend to live in the moment a little too much, and I can forget about the big picture, but if I didn't, I don't think I'd be able to look back at my journey to old age and feel like I really lived to my potential...That is to say, as I write this, I feel like there is no possible way I'll ever finish all of this, but tomorrow somehow I'll wake up believing full-well that I can, and will, to the fullest extent.

In the midst of feeling totally overwhelmed and beyond consumed with the things that I want to accomplish, something hit me.
All of this is the greatest privilege I could ever wish for.  This load is what I want.  An honest and old-fashioned challenge of my own creation.

I'm fueling every passion and whim I have by doing what I love with complete honesty and respectability.  I don't lie cheat or steal to get what I need and I build true relationships with the people that I come into contact with through all of this.

Every year I say it, and every year I mean it, I could not ask for more.

This week's accomplishments include acquiring old-growth redwood that was reclaimed from George Lucas' house...this is civil-war-era stuff, absolutely impossible to find, and it will become the interior walls of my home...faaaantastic!

I finished off a few boards this week, somehow colors match up sometimes and I end up with a batch of boards that could be a collection of their own:

                                      

Oh ya and the bike...I laid into that a bit and made a few parts acquisitions and mocked them up.  

Lots and lots more to do but here's a small window into where we're going with this one (1995 xr600r).  Don't mind the giant exhaust...that won't be sticking around.